Nick

/ Nick /

“We bake everything; bread, rolls, cakes, cakes filled with cream and what not. I would say that the vast majority of our products are what you’d call northern style products,” Nick, the owner of Gretna Bakery tells us. “We don’t do croissants or bagels like down in London. We stick to the traditional.”

Gretna bakery is a Scottish registered business with shops on either side of the border. Nick runs the business from his home in Carlisle but goes back and forth across the border several times a day. “Right now I don’t even realise I’m crossing a border, but I don’t know how that might change,” he says. He employs around 30 people from both sides of the border, some of whom live on the Scottish side and work in Carlisle and vice versa. They all currently get paid and taxed in the same way.

He tells us that he sells mostly the same products on both sides of the border. But he sells more scotch pies in the Gretna shop and he sells more meat and tattie pies in the Carlisle shop.

“We do scotch rolls as well.” he says. “But they’re just bread rolls at the end of the day.”